Herbert Rusche, the co-founder of the German Green Party and former member of the German Parliament, has joined the Pirate Party. Rusche praises the party for its open structure and its efforts to protect people’s privacy and fundamental rights. Those issues, he says, are the ones established parties fail to address.
The latest turn of events with the Digital Britain report isn’t encouraging. Lord Mandelson has reportedly prodded through a proposal to disconnect alleged file sharers, without judicial process, and without waiting for OFCOM to see if such a measure is even needed.
A working group at Finland’s Ministry of Education believes that it can reduce piracy by sending warnings to alleged file-sharers. This week saw the official registration of Finland’s Pirate Party, so TorrentFreak caught up with their spokesman Kaj Sotala for a more detailed look at the proposals and file-sharing in general in the country.
Most Pirate Bay users were genuinely upset when they found out that their favorite torrent site would be acquired by Global Gaming Factory (GGF) at the end of August. For a small subset of these fans, this move is more than an inked deal, as the coolness and even the credibility of their tattoos is in jeopardy.
Canada is planning to reform its copyright law and if the entertainment industries have their way, the rights and privacy of consumers will be thrown overboard. It’s time for all Canadian BitTorrent users to stand up against the increasing power of the anti-piracy lobby, before it’s too late.
The UK Pirate Party has been officially registered at the Electoral Commission and is hoping to follow in the footsteps of its successful counterpart in Sweden. With all the recent controversy surrounding anti-piracy legislation and lawyers going after alleged file-sharers, the party has become necessity.
Just two weeks after the Swedish Pirate Party won a seat in the European Parliament, the German PiratenPartei has gained a seat in the German government. Jörg Tauss has left the Social Democrats Party (SPD) and has joined the Pirate Party.
The two million dollar fine handed out to Jammie Thomas by a Minnesota jury this week hasn’t done the music industry’s image much good. While lawyers and high level managers at the major labels cracked open the Champagne, artists such as Moby and Radiohead shook their heads in shame at what the music world has become.
The entertainment industry battle to decrease the use of file-sharing networks to share copyrighted content never seems to end. Just this week, four more European member states came out with initiatives to continue to crackdown on piracy, many of which are not only draconian, but also doomed to fail.
The Digital Britain report will be published shortly. However, no government department will be completely knowledgeable in such a nuanced subject as peer-to-peer file-sharing. So what basic errors might the generalists make based on the submissions made to the BERR last year?
Following a request from the entertainment industries, a French court has ordered the P2P news site Numerama to cover the cases of 27 convicted file-sharers. For their efforts the site receives 10,000 euros which they promise to spend wisely by supporting a pro file-sharing cause.
